A perverse ascesis: a barthesian reading of Lori Lamby’s Pink Notebook (1990), by Hilda Hist

Abstract

This article proposes a reading of Lori Lamby’s Pink Notebook (1990), through the notions of text of pleasure and text of jouissance, present in the work The pleasure of the text (1973), by Roland Barthes. The main hypothesis worked on here, reinforced by the critical fortune of Hilst (Rosenfeld, Muzart, Moraes, Pécora, Hansen, Silva, among others) is that the Hilst work in question can be read as a text of jouissance, since it produces a rift, a rupture, a transgression in relation to the social order. There is also, in this article, a proposal for reading the work in question as a text of pleasure. In addition to these reading propositions, a discussion about the figure of the reader and his role in the attribution of meanings to the literary text is carried out and, for this purpose, authors such as Barthes, Perrone-Moisés and Culler are summoned to the debate. Finally, the article analyzes some appreciations about Lori Lamby’s Pink Notebook (1990) carried out on sites such as Amazon and Goodreads, in order to observe the current reception of this work by “ordinary” readers. This article, therefore, in line with the so-called “Crossings of criticism in Latin America” intends to explore the echoes of Barthesian texts in Latin American literary works and in their receptions, contributing to the studies of Barthes and Hilst in Brazil, revisiting their texts, and provoking new (and plural) readings around these productions.